With surgical precision, lawmakers are depriving young people of their right to vote. They have introduced over 400 voting bills in 49 states during 2021 alone, 30 of which have already been signed into law. They are targeting BIYoC populations especially. These bills and laws are gerrymandering predominantly Black colleges, banning polling sites and prohibiting voter registration on campuses and rejecting student IDs as voter IDs. The intent is to discourage BIYoC voters because of their success in impacting important elections in 2020 and in January 2021. We are deploying new data-driven interventions to help young people confront the horrifying movement of voter suppression bills across the US, which coincides with a fourth wave of COVID. We have designed three major series of interventions to dismantle new and existing barriers: Youth Civic Power, Campus Civic Power and
Institution Civic Power. We are training and deploying 600 Fellows – called “Civic Influencers” – both on- and off-campus to influence their peers and communities, through on-the-ground and digital organizing, that will lead to increased youth voter turnout and civic power.
